Planisphere

Description

Even after half a century of amazing readers, John Ashbery continues to delight and challenge with his inventiveness. "Planisphere" takes the reader on a dizzying journey in the company of a virtuoso and sorcerer who makes the commonplace magical, disorientates and teases, and conjures glimpses of 'horizons - bright and anxious': 'a space like a dream'. "Planisphere" restores to us a sense of joy and unease at the untried possibilities of language and of the world we take for granted.

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. He is the author of over twenty books of poetry. Widely honoured internationally, he is the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal from the Poetry Society of America, the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Gold Medal for Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Horst Bienek Prizefor Poetry from the Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts (Munich), the Antonio Feltrinelli International Prize for Poetry from the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome), and the Grand Prix de Biennales Internationales de Poesie (Brussels), all given for lifetime achievement. In 2002 he was named Officier of the Legion d'Honneur of the Republic of France. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages. Since 1990 he has been Charles P. Stevenson, Jr. Professor of Languages and Literature at Bard College.

'Great poetry, as T.S. Eliot said, can communicate before it is understood: Ashbery communicates in a way that both pays homage to language and transcends it at the same time.' The Guardian 'Praised as a magical genius, cursed as an obscure joker, John Ashbery writes poetry like no one else.' The Independent